WHY WE GO?
- To grow in our relationship with Jesus and one another through the development of the practices of witness and service.
- To strengthen our existing relationships with pastors and leaders who are ministering to those materially impoverished in Cochabamba (in partnership with Compassion).
- To start a relationship with a new church in Cochabamba where we recently sponsored children, and to learn more about their Child Survival Program that we had the honor to fund in 2025.
- To meet and encourage our Compassion Sponsor Child(ren).
- To learn more about the different types of poverty (including our own impoverishment), and our interdependence on one another as brothers and sisters in Christ.
WHAT WILL WE DO ?
Our journey to Bolivia will involve 3 PHASES:
PHASE 1: Pre-Trip Prep. We will begin meeting in August for the purpose of getting to know one another, and reviewing the practical steps required to prepare for our trip. We will also be learning about the different types of poverty and strategies for poverty alleviation, and more about the cultural context of the communities we will be visiting.
PHASE 2: Trip. This is the shortest period of the journey, but we will do our best to prepare you in order to squeeze every drop of out of the experience. Our journey will include:
- Visiting a church that we have supported (and learned so much from) since 2014, in order to see how God is moving, and how we can best serve and support them (team building, food preparation, planned activities for the kids, etc.). While we will remain available to serve as needed and requested, we are excited to spend time with and build on our relationships with the pastor (Pastor Macario and his wife Sylvia), leaders and children.
- We will do home visits in the Cochabamba community to meet families that are being served by Compassion (through the church), and learn their stories, and pray and minister as the Holy Spirit leads us.
- Visiting a new church to see how God is working there, serve as needed and requested, and begin a relationship with the pastors, leaders and children there. We will learn how the Child Survival Program is going, meet one of the mothers who has benefited from the program, and continue to discern how God might be calling Monterey Church to serve and support them in the future.
- Meet Compassion staff and front-fine leaders who make a daily difference in the lives of children, and learn how Compassion’s holistic model of care is breaking the cycle of generational poverty in Bolivia.
- Meet our Sponsor Child(ren)! We will meet at a park that has a number of different activities, have lunch together, play games and have an opportunity to give them a gift and pray over them (price includes an interpreter that will travel with you and your Sponsor Child(ren), and his/her guardian.).
PHASE 3: Post-Trip. We will continue to meet after the trip to process our journey, reinforce those things we learned, and encourage one another in our continued spiritual development and practices of witnessing and serving.
